Environmental Justice – Kindred Mediahttp://kindredmedia.org
Sharing the New Story of Childhood, Parenthood, and the Human FamilyWed, 21 Feb 2018 16:49:17 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4Stories Of Connection To Heal The Primal Wound – Part 7http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/stories-connection-heal-primal-wound-part-7/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/stories-connection-heal-primal-wound-part-7/#respondSun, 04 Feb 2018 19:19:19 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21045Each of us is connected to not only the web of life, but to the web of our stories. Our Stories In early life, we develop neurobiologically grounded stories based on how we are treated—with kindness and empathy or with cruelty and manipulation. These impressions form the base of our social personality before our conscious mind comes fully […]

]]>Each of us is connected to not only the web of life, but to the web of our stories.

Our Stories

In early life, we develop neurobiologically grounded stories based on how we are treated—with kindness and empathy or with cruelty and manipulation. These impressions form the base of our social personality before our conscious mind comes fully online. These are implicit, tacit stories our unconscious carries throughout the rest of life—in a direction toward openness or toward bracing against the world. (Narvaez, 2011; Tomkins, 1965).

Read Part One: The Primal Wound: Do You Have One?

Communities have a choice in what orientation—openness to or bracing against others—that they will foster in young children. Supportive communities allow parents to be responsive to and supportive of their young children. Born so immature, parental treatment shapes the functioning of our physiological systems and psychological functioning (Narvaez, 2014). We are biosocial constructions: Our biology is shaped by our social experience. The characteristics of the Evolved Nest are what helped our ancestors survive and thrive, fostering openness and wellbeing (Narvaez, Panksepp, Schore & Gleason, 2013).

The stories that rescuers in World War II tell are those of connection—’before me, there was a human being in need, how could I not help?” This was not bracing against others but openness to the other. Such an orientation appears to have been grounded in early life social support they experienced, support that builds secure attachment to parent or caregiver (Oliner & Oliner 1988).

Our Communities

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As children grow they take up the stories the community promotes. What is the nature of our connection to the natural world, to the universe, to one another? We adults can talk to our children and the children of others about their connections. What connections, webs of relationships, do you notice? Tell the world.

We can tell our stories of connection and transformation in the natural world.

Annie Dillard (1999) describes a startling encounter with a weasel when they locked eyes for the longest moment, feeling as if they exchanged souls for that instant. Her writings are filled with perceptive descriptions of connection within Nature and spirit.

Albert Schweitzer (1997) tells of the church bells ringing right when he was aiming his slingshot at a songbird. That was the last time he thought of killing a bird. He later became a world renown humanitarian, living a life of medical service.

Aldo Leopold (2016) tells of when he was young and part of the rampant wolf-killing culture, of shooting a wolf and looking the wolf in the eyes as she died. Never again.

Each of our lives is a pilgrimage, a journey led by our spirit, our unconscious awareness of things. We can describe this pathway as a hero’s journey. Many of us face challenges in figuring out who we are, what our gifts are, what our purpose is. But if we start to follow “our bliss” or our passionate interests, we have started on the path (Campbell, 2008).

Once you take up the journey, guides and mentors will come. You will notice stories that encourage you. Despite obstacles, if you stay focused, help will be provided. Of course, sometimes the challenge is to discern the difference between the necessary obstacles we must overcome to reach our dream and the signs telling us we are on the wrong path.

The hero’s journey myth helps frame the process of our becoming. Hollywood movies use this myth (or monomyth, according to Joseph Campbell, mythology scholar). The first film where it was most intentionally used was Star Wars.

Have you noticed a new idea or tantalizing path that keeps popping into your head or turning up in your life? Will you say yes? Will you take up the hero’s journey?

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/stories-connection-heal-primal-wound-part-7/feed/0Earthrise – A New Documentary Coming Earth Day 2018http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/earthrise-new-documentary-coming-earth-day-2018/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/earthrise-new-documentary-coming-earth-day-2018/#respondMon, 29 Jan 2018 18:47:35 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21012About The Film Earthrise the film tells the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968. Told solely by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the film recounts their experiences and memories and explores the beauty, awe, and grandeur of the Earth against the blackness of space. This iconic image had a powerful […]

About The Film

Earthrise the film tells the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968. Told solely by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the film recounts their experiences and memories and explores the beauty, awe, and grandeur of the Earth against the blackness of space. This iconic image had a powerful impact on the astronauts and the world, offering a perspective that transcended national, political, and religious boundaries. Told 50 years later, Earthrise compels us to remember this shift and to reflect on the Earth as a shared home.

About Earthrise/The Blue Marble

When the first NASA photos were circulated, the image of the earth suspended in vast, black space was dubbed The Blue Marble. Kindred’s editor, Lisa Reagan, has shared in her writing and presentations for years the importance of understanding this moment in human history and how it influenced the consciousness-raising movement that became the sustainable living movement, spawned the first Earth Day celebration, and inspired the Conscious Parenting Movement. Here is an excerpt from her article Our Conscious Journey, an overview of astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s experience in space that led to the founding of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, IONS. Mitchell’s profound shift in consciousness to a more whole, integrated awareness after witnessing earthrise, also called the Blue Marble in photos, inspired forty years of human consciousness research that is still ongoing.

Watch Lisa Reagan’s New Story presentation here to see the full tragectory and unfolding of this New Story of Childhood, Parenthood and the Human Family that Kindred is dedicated to exploring and sharing.

The Epiphany

Moon dust floated throughout the command module as the Apollo 14 astronauts piloted the spacecraft into a slow spin, exposing all sides of the Kitty Hawk to the sun’s rays and pointing its five rotating windows toward a luminous, blue-and white planet. Settling in for the three-day flight home, Captain Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, shifted his thoughts toward the expansive view outside the spacecraft and reflected on the lunar mission’s accomplishments.

“This wasn’t the achievement of an individual, a space agency, or even a country,” Mitchell wrote in his autobiography, The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds. “This was, rather, the achievement of our species, our civilization. Life had come a long way since it first sprang from the Earth’s rock and water.”

What happened next, when the veil of moon dust settled in the cabin as the command module hurtled through the heavens at 36,300 feet per second, would catapult Mitchell into a previously unimaginable frontier of scientific exploration: human consciousness.

“What I experienced during that three-day trip home was nothing short of an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness. I actually felt what has been described as an ecstasy of unity. It occurred to me that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft itself were manufactured long ago in the furnace of one of the ancient stars that burned in the heavens about me. And there was a sense that our presence as space travelers, and the existence of the universe itself, was not accidental, but that there was an intelligent process at work. I perceived the universe as in some way conscious,” wrote Mitchell.

By the time the red-and-white parachute safely splashlanded the Kitty Hawk in the Pacific Ocean, Mitchell’s life had been transformed into a game of pick-up sticks. “Within a few days my beliefs about life were thrown into the air and scattered about,” he wrote. “It took me 20 years to pick up the sticks and make some kind of sense of it all.”

The undeniable wholeness of the earth dangling in infinite space entered into the world’s psyche in the nowfamous photos entitled “The Blue Marble” and “Earthrise.” In Earthrise: How Man First Saw The Earth, British historian Robert Poole writes that NASA was unprepared for the paradoxical reaction the photos of earthrise provoked. “Rather than turning people’s eyes on a future in space, it refocused them on Earth…. Fifteen months later came the first Earth Day and the start of an ‘eco-renaissance’ devoted to preserving and protecting ‘Spaceship Earth.’”

While many of Apollo’s astronauts reported deeply spiritual experiences upon seeing their home planet from outer space, it was Mitchell who followed through on his earthrise epiphany with a commitment to investigate his insight of wholeness and consciousness by leaving NASA and its astro-futurist vision in 1972 for the unchartered frontier of inner space. In 1973, Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, IONS: a new era’s mission control for inner space exploration. “Noetic,” from the Greek nous, means “inner wisdom, direct knowing, or subjective understanding.”

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/earthrise-new-documentary-coming-earth-day-2018/feed/0The Neurophysiology Of Spiritual Guidancehttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/neurophysiology-spiritual-guidance/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/neurophysiology-spiritual-guidance/#respondSat, 20 Jan 2018 20:21:05 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=20937Stephanie shares her personal investigations and clinical research into how the brain networks experiences of spiritual guidance alongside her understanding of the neurophysiology of receiving and transmitting it. Clear guidance is differentiated from intuition or occasional psychic hunches. It is an integrated, holistic neuro-chemical phenomenon that forever transforms the individual who experiences it, recalibrating their nervous system. […]

]]>See Stephanie Mines at the Climate Change and Consciousness: Our Legacy for the Earth!

Stephanie shares her personal investigations and clinical research into how the brain networks experiences of spiritual guidance alongside her understanding of the neurophysiology of receiving and transmitting it. Clear guidance is differentiated from intuition or occasional psychic hunches. It is an integrated, holistic neuro-chemical phenomenon that forever transforms the individual who experiences it, recalibrating their nervous system.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/neurophysiology-spiritual-guidance/feed/0Sexual Predators, God In The Sky, And The Rape Of Mother Naturehttp://kindredmedia.org/2017/12/sexual-predators-god-sky-rape-mother-nature/
http://kindredmedia.org/2017/12/sexual-predators-god-sky-rape-mother-nature/#respondMon, 18 Dec 2017 13:17:39 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=20797Imagine growing from conception and throughout childhood without being blamed or shamed, punished or rewarded. No corporal punishments, i.e., spanking. No bribes, do this and you will get that. No time outs. No condemning words or threatening looks. Not even comparison. That means winning or losing, grades and hierarchy are off limits too. Oh, you […]

]]>Imagine growing from conception and throughout childhood without being blamed or shamed, punished or rewarded. No corporal punishments, i.e., spanking. No bribes, do this and you will get that. No time outs. No condemning words or threatening looks. Not even comparison. That means winning or losing, grades and hierarchy are off limits too. Oh, you can see which stack of blocks reach taller before falling down, but it is the blocks that have all the attention, not the one stacking. In place of these you experienced open and honest empathy and respect for feelings and needs, your feelings and needs and equally respect and appreciation for the feelings and needs of others, including plants, animals, water and the earth, along with, of course, natural consequences. Fire is, indeed, hot.

The way the early brain, body and developing psyche experiences this trust, empathy and respect is through touch, affection and pleasurable sensations, mother nature, not symbols and not with abstract concepts, like a God in the sky.

What would you be like if that was the environment you were planted in? How would the society and our world be different?

Be Worried About Boys, Especially Baby Boys – a three part series by Darcia Narvaez, PhD

The #MeToo celebration begs the perennial question: why do men stalk, grab, grope, beat, humiliate, rape and demand ‘power over’ females and their bodies? Surely empathy and true intelligence are not the cause. Rather it is the absence of these that fuels the plague. Scorning, revealing and even punishing the predator does little to dissuade. The roots of Donald’s (by his own admission) pussy-grabbing, bragging and subsequent bullying, along with the mean and broken legions like him, were planted deep in the male body and psyche long before. We all know, or should know, this pervasive abuse is not sexual, rather it is an expression of deep inner, embodied rage acted out, using sexuality as a weapon. Why? Because of the implicit intimacy denied.

Sensory deprivation, a form of torture, predisposes the deprived sensory system to be hyper-sensitive to the sensations deprived. When sensory deprivation is inflicted very early and is normalized by the culture, this hunger for and hyper-sensitivity to the denied sensations becomes etched as a near permanent pattern in the developing psyche. We routinely mutilate the most sensate tissues of our male infant penises and have for centuries then make up all sorts of justifications to blind ourselves to the truth. Pleasure is sinful says the disembodied God in the sky. Circumcision (male and female) results in sensory deprivation. Males, contrary to the popular and enabling Patriarchal myth, are biologically and therefore psychologically the weaker sex and therefore are at greater risk of this sensory-deprived etching. (See The Natural Superiority of Women by Ashley Montagu.) The bravo, brute strength and manipulative cunning of the predator mask this broken and maladaptive body, heart and psyche. After all, he was first an innocent victim of a culture that fails to support, value and empower women as nurturing mothers.

In chapter six, No Mercy, in Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential–and Endangered, Bruce Perry, MD, PhD, describes Ryan, a young man from an affluent family, who leads the gang rape of a girl with special mental needs. Clearly, being disadvantaged was not the cause, on the contrary. Apparently caring parents were chronically absent. Ryan was raised by a parade of nannies.

Compared very early to ‘be the best,’ the pressure intensifies year by year; tests, grades, adult organized athletics. What is it that needs to be ‘the best?” Not the body. It is the concept and images we create about ourselves, our ego, our social-psyche. In When the Body Says No: The Stress Disease Connection, Gabor Mate, MD, frames the social-image or ego as a coping pattern created to navigate the perils of a threatening culture. The core insight in this must read book is: the need to cope is so great that creating and maintaining the outer defending image masks and renders unconscious the underlying stress being coped with. Unaddressed, chronic stress weakens the immune system and we get sick. The same is true of Ryan and his parent’s failure to express and therefore cultivate true empathy. Pioneering researcher and gentle birth advocate, Michel Odent, M.D. refers to this as an “impaired capacity to love.” Remember, our social identity is built upon our sensory and emotional systems. Twist these at the beginning and the cognitive images we create of self and others are also twisted. We then live in a twisted reality which is the only reality we have.

Sensory deprivation is normal. Today, roughly eighteen percent of babies are breast fed for twelve months. In 2001 only 2.7% were breastfeeding at 24 months, as recommended by the World Health Organization (Hediger, 2001; Prescott, 2001). The vast majority get plastic and are fed synthetic formulas void of touch, sight, smell, warmth, rocking, cooing, smiling, in a word, empty of loving. The United States ranks last of industrialized nations in mother and family support, so early and extended child care is often not an option. Babies are strapped in carriers, rather than carried in-arms. Toddlers are stowed conveniently in strollers and given an electronic device to ‘play’ with, isolated, no touch, no alive affectionate faces to relate with. A Kaiser study found that children ages 2 to 5 relate with media more than 32 hours a week. Older children spend as much as 11 hours each day consuming commercial digital media. Add it up. The empathic development-literacy score is pretty low with corresponding increases in aggression and violence. High empathy, low aggression and violence. Low empathy, high rates of violence.

Where does empathy come from? Being treated with empathy by others from the very start. That darn Golden Rule again.

In mid-eighties, dealing with an epidemic of very young cruel children, psychologist Ken Magid termed the phrase High Risk: Children Without A Conscious, in the book of the same name. A High Risk child of fifteen in 1985 is a fifty-two-year-old predator today. Trust Bandit is the phrase Ken used to describe the cunning manipulations of High Riskindividuals. Having no empathy themselves they see empathy in others as a weakness to be exploited, and they do. Now, consider the #MeToo claims being levied at any number of politicians, executives and Hollywood producers, all successful predators in a predator prone culture.

In 1981, my friend Pat was training in Los Angeles for the 1984 Olympics. After working out on a usual Tuesday evening, she retired to her Westwood apartment to be awakened by a stranger with a paper bag over his head, yielding a butcher knife. This stranger had been stalking her for weeks. After three hours, I will skip the details, she was able to grab the knife and chase the assailant out of her home. Pat and I had coffee a few days later. This lead to three-year quest involving over fifty rape-crises centers, victims, law enforcement, crime prevention practitioners and forensic psychiatrist, William Vicary, M.D., who handed me a stack of text books on rape and sexual assault. Vicary was then the head of USC’s sexual assault program. After digesting the stack of books, I returned to William’s office and repeated my core question, “why would a man do such a thing?” With a knowing look, the good doctor shared; without exception, the stalking, hardcore predator-rapist was abused and/or severely neglected by the primary source of nurturing in his very young life.

The Primal Wound: Do You Have One? A three part series by Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Subsequently I began to see most, if not all, expressions of violence and domestic abuse of women and children as a continuum of severity, with a common cause. Once a social-ego structure is twisted at its roots it demands enormous and conscious effort to untie the knots – with at best compensatory results. With an abundance of empathy at the beginning, and by that I mean the developing child’s needs are seen, respected and met with playful affection and touch, empathy for others is what the child experiences and the social-self forms accordingly. Denied this primal empathic response, communicated through touch and pleasure, the social-self organizes in increasingly defensive, narcissistic and even sadistic ways, a hungry ghost, to use the Buddhist term, that can never be satiated. By the time a predator shows his stuff it is too late. The twisted neural wiring was etched into place long before. All we can do with the “pussy-grabbing” predator is damage control.

Dr. Vicary went on to describe how the need for nurturing, pleasure and affectionate touch was turned against and therefore twisted in the very young male child. He would be punished and shamed for expressing this basic need for true intimacy. As the boy matured his guarded defensive would be there when he reached out and express this honest need. In the same way wild animals don’t trust the twisted psyche of human beings, young girls would shun and reject the boy’s unnatural overtures. Puberty hits this twisted social-system with a vengeance, “like lighting a match over gasoline,” Vicary explained, and there you have the answer.

The intentional twisting of fundamental human capacities, especially in disposable males, is not new. In The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History, friend Howard Bloom compared the way males were treated in Athens and neighboring Sparta Between 431 and 404 BC. In Sparta breaking the nurturing bond — punishing and shaming any expression of this basic need — became a science, producing efficient predators, perfect for a war driven culture. Joseph Chilton Pearce descried other cultures that do the same. Creating predators is highly valued in a culture dominated by predators, the United States of America for example. Any wonder so many athletes are charged with domestic violence. Remember O.J. Simpson and Ryan in Bruce Perry’s, Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential–and Endangered?

Creating patriarchal predators began long, long ago. Arthur and Elena George tackle this obliquely in The Mythology of Eden. To become the supreme ruler, somewhere between 1660s B.C. to 400s B.C., the Eden story reveals how the abstract concept of a male God in the sky had to push aside, discredit and subdue, in a word ‘rape’ mother nature who was then Goddess and source of life. We moved from an embodied God in everything to a separate, ruling, judging, eye for an eye Patriarch above and with that the glass ceiling in its various forms was locked into place. The Spanish Inquisition and witch hunts lasted 300 years. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men had experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.

Male predators aren’t born, they are made.

Read more about Michael’s new book, Playful Wisdom: A Father’s Adventure.

A study of anthropological data found that those societies which give their infants the greatest amount of physical affection have less theft, violence, depression and suicide among adults. Deprivation of bodily pleasure during infancy is linked to a high rate of crime and violence. Why?

Pain and pleasure experienced early in life shapes the developing brain for peace or violence.

These two sensory processes shape two different brains: the neurodissociative or neurointegrative brain.

Neural networks formed early in life influence the neural networks in the later developing neocortical brain, the cognitive brain system that forms our social and moral values.

Children reared under conditions of pleasure (affectional bonding) are placed on a life path of affection, peace, harmony and egalitarianism.

Most children reared under conditions of pain and empathic neglect (affectional deprivation) are placed on a life path of depression, violence, authoritarianism, addiction, depression and/or suicide.

We must recognize, value and support the full equality of the feminine if affectionate and sexually non-violent relationships are to prevail.

Additionally, for the past thirty years the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, APPPAH, has thoroughly documented the profound sentient-sensitivity of the prenatal baby and newborn, focusing heavily on the sources of very-early trauma and its lifelong imprints. (Listen to APPPAH founder Thomas Verny, MD, talk about bringing birth psychology to the world in his Kindred interview.)

In my new book, Playful Wisdom, I describe how the fundamental templates, the core neural wiring, that sculpt our behavior for a lifetime, is well established by age two, not five, not seven. It is astonishing to consider that the first eighteen months are, for the most part, nonverbal, not conceptual. We don’t ‘teach’ empathy. We create predators, or not, by the nonverbal messages we express, by the way we touch, the tone of our voice (not what is being said), by the way we hold, or not, and by the empathy weexperience caring for and holding the future in our hearts and hands.

The #MeToo movement is saying to us all, “look at what we have done.” Look at what we have done points to the first eighteen months. Here is where the twist begins with compounding interest at puberty and after. Here is where our preventative attention must be. Of course, we need to expose and not tolerate the predator’s behavior but punishing the predator does nothing to prevent more predators. We proudly profit from war by stealing from our mothers and children. What kind of collective psyche would do such a thing and then brag about it so they can do it again? The #MeToo movement is screaming. Look at what we are doing.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2017/12/sexual-predators-god-sky-rape-mother-nature/feed/0Normal Is Over – A New Documentary Filmhttp://kindredmedia.org/2017/07/normal-new-documentary-film/
http://kindredmedia.org/2017/07/normal-new-documentary-film/#respondSat, 29 Jul 2017 17:10:53 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=20513Normal Is Over The Movie (103)_ENG from ReneeScheltema on Vimeo. Award-winning feature documentary about humanity’s wisest responses to climate change, species extinction, resource depletion and the widening gap between the rich and poor. First film connecting the dots: A look at the financial and economical paradigm underlying our planetary problems, while offering various SOLUTIONS to […]

Award-winning feature documentary about humanity’s wisest responses to climate change, species extinction, resource depletion and the widening gap between the rich and poor.

Book a screening from anywhere in the world for your local community.

First film connecting the dots: A look at the financial and economical paradigm underlying our planetary problems, while offering various SOLUTIONS to reverse the path of global decline.

Normal Is Over is a compelling and visually rich film directed by award-winning and investigative journalist Renée

Her film chronicles the way humans have inadvertently imperiled our planet: species extinction, climate change, the depletion of critical natural resources, and industrial control of our food production.
This unique documentary examines how our economic and financial system connects these issues, and offers SOLUTIONS, which could be implemented immediately; from practical everyday fixes to rethinking the overarching myths of our time.

With an open mind Renée investigates the cause, and symptoms of our crisis while offering hope. She meets experts, and pioneers all over the world, trying to stave off global decline. They concentrate on matters such as ecological economics, organic agriculture, renewable energy, saving species, reducing our carbon footprints, and sustainable finance.

The film mixes accurate, relevant content with humor, and suggests ways how we can take positive practical action and change our lifestyles for future generations.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2017/07/normal-new-documentary-film/feed/0We Need An NRA For Naturehttp://kindredmedia.org/2017/02/need-nra-nature/
http://kindredmedia.org/2017/02/need-nra-nature/#respondTue, 28 Feb 2017 19:31:42 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=20837The other day, I received a note from a good friend, photojournalist Anne Pearse Hocker. In the 1970s, she snuck across a no man’s land into the Wounded Knee encampment, and spent weeks photographing the protest. Those photos are currently in the Smithsonian Museum. A widow, she now lives in a cabin with two dogs, […]

The other day, I received a note from a good friend, photojournalist Anne PearseHocker. In the 1970s, she snuck across a no man’s land into the Wounded Knee encampment, and spent weeks photographing the protest. Those photos are currently in the Smithsonian Museum. A widow, she now lives in a cabin with two dogs, two cats and two hunting falcons.

She loves the wild landscape of the West, is dismayed by new threats to it, and is surprised by a change in her internal landscape.

VISIT THE CHILD AND NATURE NETWORK, CNN

“Something new is needed,” she wrote. She referenced the Women’s March in Helena: “Here in deep red Montana, over 10,000 people marched in Helena, smashing all records and expectations. The organizers started out hoping for 500. The night before the march they predicted possibly 5,000. Meanwhile, the state’s Central Democratic Committee virtually ignored it. As if it never happened.” She does not believe that her own party understands the growing anger and sense of urgency that she and others like her feel. “Someone or something needs to ride that wind before it gets away.”

It’s time to build an NRA for nature — an environmental or conservation force comparable to the nation’s powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association — one capable of striking fear into the heart of, say, any climate-change-denying politician, Republican, Democrat, or Other.

You may or may not like the NRA, but you have to admit that the organization, like the Tea Party, knows how to get its way.

A handful of green groups aspire to that political power, and many have done a good job influencing regulatory policies, but I can’t recall the last time I read about an environmental or conservation group mounting a successful campaign to boot multiple members of Congress from office. Maybe it’s happened, but not often enough. And now the ante is upped. If political candidates aren’t afraid of environmentalism’s political power, what good is environmental activism?

Have we reached a point where environmentalism is less about political power than about moral preening? Or lifestyle choices?

“The last few weeks have rocked the environmental movement. In the wake of the November elections, environmentalists are deeply concerned about the future of the Paris climate accord, the rollback of federal environmental protections, and even the fate of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency itself,” writes Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the Environmental Voter Project,

He points to an inconvenient truth: as a group, environmentalists are miserable voters. Approximately 20.1 million self-identified environmentalists are registered to vote, he says, but in the 2014 mid-term elections, only 4.2 million of them voted. In the 2012 presidential election barely 10 million environmentalists voted.

Meanwhile, in 2014, NRA-backed candidates won over 91 percent of Congressional races in which they endorsed a candidate — even though 90 percent of Americans supported background checks for gun owners, even in the wake of the killing of 26 people, mostly schoolchildren, at Sandy Hook Elementary School. (After Sandy Hook, the NRA claimed its membership actually surged.)

Why is it that the NRA can have its way with Congress but environmentalists and conservationists are so often on the defensive?

One explanation is that, for many Americans, the environment – especially when it comes to climate change – is an abstraction.

This is true in part because so many indoor kids or their parents never have the chance to fall in love with nature. It’s also true because of the most common language of environmentalism, oddly both opaque and apocalyptic. By contrast, the NRA’s focus is as hard and tangible as gunmetal. Guns and gun ownership are more deeply embedded in the national character than environmentalism, which is newer on the scene. Gun owners are more focused on individual self-defense than on a generalized threat of gun violence. And gun ownership is protected as a Constitutional right (interpretations will vary).

Consequently, to many Americans gun ownership is not only tangible, but a deeply personal and emotional issue – and that is the way the NRA frames it.

The NRA doesn’t have a lock on emotion; it’s how they aim it. Most Americans, of all political persuasions, were deeply upset by Sandy Hook and other massacres. Yet, after Sandy Hook, legislation requiring background checks once again failed to pass the Senate. Marketing, campaign spending, overwhelming lobbying power, a powerful industry, and political fear ruled the day.

The kind of emotion that the NRA taps is different from the episodic mass tragedies of gun violence. Those tragedies are like thunderstorms, violent for a spell and then a memory; but the NRA’s rain is slow, relentless, never ceasing.

It’s time to learn from the NRA, even if the lessons are uncomfortable.

Let’s start by expanding on a familiar concept. Most thinking people understand the NRA’s power. Consequently, they would get the idea of an NRA for nature. That frame is clear, concise, and potent. An NRA for nature (insert proper name and acronym here) could take form as a new membership organization, massive expansion of an existing organization, a tight network of multiple groups, or a shared campaign launched by all of the above.

Money will be an issue. Nonprofits tend to compete for support from the same funders, and therefore tend to see each other as competitors. Trump’s election will undoubtedly grow the number of individual donations, but government money for environmental causes will likely shrink. Also, 501(c)(3) nonprofits are limited in what they can do politically. Public education is allowed; lobbying for specific bills and campaigning for candidates is restricted. “Social welfare” organizations like the NRA are classified as 501(c)(4), and allowed to lobby. The tradeoff: donations are not deductible. That doesn’t discourage loyal members from sending checks. To NRA members, it’s not about the deduction, it’s about the principle.

Green super PACS may someday have superpowers, but not yet. They failed to make much of a dent in the 2016 elections. (Although the outcomes might have been even worse without their participation.)

Republicans not only won the White House, but kept their majorities in Congress. Republicans now dominate 32 state legislatures and 33 governors’ mansions, accounting for roughly 80 percent of the U.S. population. Unlike in the past, when conservatives were some of the highest-profile conservation leaders, most Republicans resist environmentalism. (Not all: this week a group of Republicans led by former Secretary of State James Baker called for a tax on carbon to fight climate change.)

But the night is still young.

One can at least imagine a coordinated campaign for more philanthropy, more individual donors, a network of industries and deep-pocketed individuals — especially from the high-tech world — to support 501(c)(3) groups that educate and grow the social base, and an even more aggressive effort to increase contributions to the 501(c)(4) organizations that lobby and work for the election of political candidates. Add to that a permanent, relentless voter mobilization drive. If it reaches scale, that three-pronged campaign, while not identical in form, could be a green equivalent of the NRA.

Along with more political action, we need a broader constituency to support good candidates, one with greater diversity of religion, race, ethnicity and economics.

Guns and the Second Amendment are powerful symbols to rally around. But so are urban gardens, natural schoolyards, parks, clean air and water, wilderness, and the human right that every child has to the psychological, physical and spiritual gifts of nature. And, of course, the tenuousness of our tenure on the planet – a more abstract issue, but as real as rain.

Our greatest barrier is despair. For years, Americans have been trapped in a dystopian trance, a passive assumption of a post-apocalyptic future. We need a balancing set of images, ones that depict a future that is not only energy-efficient, but nature-rich, with cities and countryside that serve as engines of biodiversity and health.

Making that tangible to voters won’t happen overnight, but it’s possible — especially if we don’t write off Republicans or rural America (as some progressives have suggested) or big chunks of the population who do care about nature but prefer snowplows to skis, bird hunting to bird watching.

The children and nature movement may point the way. It brings together conservatives and liberals and people from all walks of life. We don’t have to agree on everything to care about our children’s connection to the natural world. We want something better for them.

Plank by plank, we can build a bigger boat. Anne of Montana sees the potential. In a state not known for protest marches, the women’s march “blew the doors off,” she says. “It surprised everyone. A subsequent rally for public lands a week later garnered about 1,000 people in Helena, with many conservative sportsmen’s groups participating, and the governor spoke. It was twice the size of a similar public lands rally in 2015.” The crowd probably included NRA members, who care about land and water and air, too.

“Although I have guns and use them, I do not belong to the NRA,” says Anne. “But I do respect their marketing and passion.”

To Anne’s surprise, she’s beginning to feel some optimism about Montana, about the nation, and about her own role. She may be numb to statistics about melting ice caps, but she can feel the land. “I am one of the angry ones,” she says. Something new is rising in her. It’s tagged to emotion, not numbers, not logic alone. “I believe the usual models of the progressive movement are no longer working. Just my opinion. Facts are only mildly interesting to someone who is emotionally on fire.”

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2017/02/need-nra-nature/feed/0Cultural Composting In The Chinese Year Of The Roosterhttp://kindredmedia.org/2017/02/cultural-composting-year-rooster/
http://kindredmedia.org/2017/02/cultural-composting-year-rooster/#respondTue, 28 Feb 2017 04:24:29 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=19818Is 2017 The Year Patriarchy Comes Home To Roost? It’s the Chinese Year of the Rooster and even Bill Nye the Science Guy is saying the new leader of the free world is going to have a “catastrophic effect on the planet.” How did we get here? Roosters, warlords and worshippers of patriarchy share an […]

It’s the Chinese Year of the Rooster and even Bill Nye the Science Guy is saying the new leader of the free world is going to have a “catastrophic effect on the planet.” How did we get here? Roosters, warlords and worshippers of patriarchy share an entangled history worth noting as our Tweeter-in-Chief crows his plans for dismantling civilization as we know it.

Legend and the Smithsonian Magazine say roosters were discovered in Greece in the fifth century B.C by Athenian general Themistocles on his way to confront the invading Persian forces. The warlord stopped to watch two cocks fighting by the side of the road, then summoned his troops to capture them, initiating a now millennia-old tradition of cockfighting and drive thru chicken nuggets.

The Trump Phenomenon Started With Childhoods, By Robin Grille. Click on image to read.

Our ancient patriarchal culture’s love for violence against the weak led to hundreds of years of training roosters to fight to the death in gambling pits. Survivors of this bloody sport went on to stud a lineage of aggressive fowl whose progeny occasionally swims to the surface of a now mostly domesticated gene pool. In my family’s early days of flock management we marveled at the roosters who courageously stepped into the unprotected open, crowing defiantly at low circling hawks while the hens ran for cover. When our roosters discovered new corn or grubs, they cackled a singular type of alarm, then stood back and allowed the hens to eat first.

Almost every rooster we’ve raised over 15 years on our small Virginia farm was consistent in his commitment to protect and serve the flock. Almost every one… then there were the jittery guys who stalked me up the hill from the chicken house or jumped a child from behind a fence post, unsheathed talons going for soft bellies and throats. Sometimes, the hackle-raised, erratic, indefatigable energy seemed a desperate prayer to predators for relief.

The first time I worriedly asked an experienced farmer friend for advice, she hung her head and nearly whispered, “Well, those are the throwbacks. It’s a shame they were trained to fight in the past. Sometimes you get one.”

That year we wept while drawing the ISO New Home poster, the kind feed and seed stores and poultry clubs sport regularly on their community boards. The popularity of the Backyard Poultry Movement also spawned rooster sanctuaries, founded by those sympathetic to the unwanted throwbacks. A few Internet videos promise an aggressive rooster can be turned into the family darling, and maybe, with lots of therapy, they can. But a rehabilitated cockfighter seems a like a vision born of urban denial when you’ve run for your life from a mid-air, squawking ninja attack.

And then there was Henster.

After the coyotes moved into our woods and took our last rooster, a formerly nondescript Araucana hen began to crow. She even grew a small cock’s comb and a few green tail feathers. We discovered her transformation was acknowledged by poultry farmers: that a hen could step forward and shape-shift into a rooster for the good of the flock. Later that year, when we rescued an abandoned flock with one rooster, Henster and the new rooster crowed toward each other across the lawn, sure to keep their territory lines clear. But eventually, Henster stopped crowing and blended back into the flock.

It’s now 2017 and the Chinese Year of the Rooster. The only bird to appear in the Chinese zodiac, its mis-translation into English, pushed through a patriarchal filter, results in the male “cock or rooster,” while the traditional Chinese the term applies to “barnyard fowl of either sex.”

What will the year ahead bring? Will it be the year of the throwback rooster or the shape-shifting henster?

More Bizarre Than Henster

Endless crowing, unwanted sexual advances on hens, taunting predators, unprovoked attacks and generally upsetting the peace… while aggressive throwback roosters are pitied, in humans the same traits are clinically diagnosed as malignant narcissism. (See the Johns Hopkins psychotherapist’s diagnosis of Trump here and the petition of over 30,000 mental health professionals here.)

What happens when a throwback human, an embodied echo of millenia of patriarchal culture and dominator values, is catapulted through bizarre and dark circumstances to become the leader of the “free world”?

While Saturday Night Live ratings are the highest they’ve been in years, offering comedic relief to the daily insanity of the Trump administration, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists marked the 70th anniversary of the Doomsday Clock by moving its hands close to midnight after Trump’s inauguration. Theoretical physicist, Lawrence M. Krauss and retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley wrote in a New York Times op-ed, “Never before has the Bulletin decided to advance the clock largely because of the statements of a single person. But when that person is the new president of the United States, his words matter.”

Neither the culturally engineered throwback rooster nor modern corporate warlord is a happy soul, and perhaps they both deserve our pity. Under the frantic crowing, territory displays and invitation to predators to end their suffering, both seem to bear the same message:

“This is what patriarchy looks like. No one is happy or healthy in this death worshiping, dominator system, most especially silo-building corporate revers. Having your soul chipped away from you resulting in your inability to create peace in yourself or with others is hell. This is what patriarchy looks like.”

While throwbacks are considered anomalies today, they exist through the careful cultural constructions embedded in the patriarchal system we still inherit every day – through our own cells, family patterns, social morays, religious traditions, racism, misogyny, industrial values that put profit before people and institutions that support the creation of compliant humans from conception and birth.

While the throwback’s motivation is to dominate and destroy, it is a low level of consciousness born of a belief in our separateness from life. Joseph Chilton Pearce wrote in a dozen books during his lifetime that it is our own individual enculturation into patriarchy that mires us in fear and paralysis. Through the lens of an integrated, connected worldview, destruction of the Old Story is replaced with a worldview of living systems – one that simply composts the parts we don’t need anymore while cultivating the New Story we do.

Cultural Composting: From Hiraeth To Hygge

Parenting In The Space Between Stories, An Interview With Charles Eisenstein. Click on image to read.

While Donald Trump may have stolen the election with the help of Russian intelligence, the majority of Americans stand ready with markers and poster boards, not to create ISO signs in feed stores, but to remove him from office with consistent displays of resistance. The daily news feed exudes the same frenetic call for mercy dance as a throwback rooster on a hillside under circling raptors, while those called to serve the greater good shape shift into whatever forms are needed.

We’re all done here. Patriarchy is ending its long, torturous run with a grand exit toward the compost pile. But what comes next?

This question is harder for Americans that we would like to believe, for few of us have witnessed, much less experienced, a nurturing, sustainable culture. Nearly twenty years ago, in my own search for the roots of wellness, especially as a mother who wanted to avoid passing along throwback genes in the form of dysfunctional family patterns to my son, I harbored beliefs of something better, something collectively, culturally possible. Not finding examples of this nurture-based world led me to believe in the idea of Hiraeth, a Welsh word meaning a homesickness for a place you’ve never been.

“I guess I’m just a romantic, imaging things should be better,” I would tell myself.

In meditation circles, I heard leaders speak consolingly to participants that our collective agony was really “celestial nostalgia,” again, a longing for a place we’ve never been, at least in human form. My resentful anger and nebulous grief felt shushed by these terms, so, feeling like a crazy woman, I channeled that energy into activism through a Families for Conscious Living community group.

Only in recent years did I discover mothers and fathers in other countries expect to have their needs met when they bring children into the world. These families experienced paid family leave, breastfeeding support, someone to help with laundry to a midwifery model of care that was respectful of the motherbabyfather triad from conception, to comprehensive social systems dedicated to supporting human beings.

As Darcia Narvaez, PhD, writes, “The US is the worst place to raise a child in the world” because of our dominator and bullying culture. In fact, she writes, we must now make a choice to continue to forfeit our humanity and raise the next generation of humans as reptiles, throwbacks, or reclaim our birthright to our humanity through the conscious creation of a nurturing culture.

Who are these other countries and how are they doing it?

Denmark, ranked the happiest country in the world by the United Nations’ World Happiness Report, credits their culturally supported emotional state to a word on the 2016 Oxford Dictionary’s shortlist: hygge, pronounced, “hoo-guh”. Other contenders for the word of the year were “alt-right,” “Brexiteer,” and the winner, “post-truth.”

Hygge derives from a sixteenth-century Norwegian term, hugga, meaning “to comfort” or “to console,” which is related to the English word “hug.” The Danish people who consciously practice hygge – and it is a conscious practice – are called hyggelige, and characterized by calm, welcoming kindness, even and most especially, to strangers.

That hygge hails from the word “hug” gives me great pause. In the documentary film, In Utero, psychiatrist and addiction specialist, Gabor Maté, MD, describes his conversations with heroin addicts who tell him the reason they love heroin is, “Because it feels like a warm hug.” America’s heroin epidemic is well chronicled and an acknowledged consequence of America’s patriarchal culture. (See CNN’s Heroin In America: The Scarring Of The Next Generation. See more about In Utero and Kindred’s Film Guide here.)

Hygge is not a lifestyle, says Wiking in the VICE news clip, “It is part of our national DNA.”

“What does America have to learn from Denmark in terms of happiness and hygge” asks Mary H. K. Choi, VICE News interviewer.

“I think Denmark is what the US would look like if Bernie Sanders was president,” says Wiking. “I think the most defining characteristic of Denmark is democratic socialism: universal healthcare, equal opportunities for men and women, paid university education, social security. At a certain point, additional income does not lead to improved quality of life.”

Choi says the “zeitgeist of hygge is transplanting nicely in America,” and turns the camera to scenes of a Danish family living in New York City eating dinner together without their iPhones, consciously committed to engaging with one another.

It’s great that HBO is offering this five-minute news clip and is encouraging Americans to think of hygge as the next “cool” meme to adopt: compassionate, conscious living as nuclear and expanded human families. But that meme already exists in America in form of the twenty year-old nonprofit, Families for Conscious Living, the parent organization of Kindred. FCL’s slogan is “Believing In The ReGeneration Since 1996” and Kindred’s is “Sharing the New Story of Childhood, Parenthood and the Human Family.” We just didn’t have a cool name like “hygge” to describe our work or HBO to promote us. (As an award-winning nonprofit featuring courageous thought leaders and advocates for conscious living, we can only go so far on our $10,000 a year budget. Please donate here.)

Becoming Cultural Gardeners – Henster’s Shape Shifting Secret

What allows a hen to shape shift her form to serve her community? To grow a comb, tail feathers and crow to protect her flock? What in her own consciousness shifts? Could it be simply answering the call to serve sets in motion an interconnected, innate intelligence, an evolutionary design for progressive change? In 2017’s Chinese Year of the “ahem” Rooster, there are multiple opportunities and invitations emerging for those called to shape shift into what is needed to serve the great good of humanity. So how did Henster do it?

The Blueprint: Our Unifying Field’s Potential For Connection And Wholeness, A Video Interview With Ray Castellino. Click on image to read.

Living on a farm means witnessing the smaller patterns embedded in the larger ones, even the biggest frameworks – our own consciousness. The cycles of life, natural forces that keep balance, our spiritual capacity for grounded-expansion and our own cellular Blueprint all conspire to remind us we are never separate from the interdependent whole of life. As Ray Castellino describes in The Blueprint, “The expansion and gathering of the tides, winds and harmonic resonances of life exist in our cells, in our own Blueprint, our unifying field.”

This is what patriarchy forgot. That we are one, and when we follow the call to serve one another, shape shifting is natural and naturally possible. We can empathetically recognize our own inner throwback and reach for henster instead… who knew backyard poultry was so deep, or magical?

As humans, moving between the Old Story and the New Story means living in the Space Between These Stories, waking up, sleeping, waking up. What is possible when we are safe in compassionate community, when we are supported on our path, when we remember to connect with our Blueprint? I believe we naturally become Cultural Gardeners. We become unafraid to face and name the parts of our culture that do not support humanity, or life on earth. We are practical in our approach to moving these parts to the compost bin while working together to create whole systems that serve humanity, and all life on earth.

Here are my own Cultural Gardening insights, courtesy of Henster, the throwbacks and many consciousness-raising activists on my little patch of Earth in Virginia:

Tend the soil of our own consciousness. Pick your practice and go with it, but this ability will help us spend less time entranced by coiffed, orange plumage and more time taking right action.

Tend the soil of our earth suits. This step is interdependent with the first step, as a dominator culture sports ubiquitous weapons of mass distraction intended to create need and want while draining your bank account and life energy.

Tend our soil together. Create or find a supportive community that will gently and compassionately help you remember numbers one and two when you forget. Remember, next week you will get to help them remember as well!

Recognize cycles and seasons. This helps with mastering expectations of wanting sunflowers in winter, or a sane president when clearly an insane one is needed at this time to model for us exactly what millennia of patriarchy-in-action looks like.

Be ready to let go, put down, remove, compost what no longer serves us. Whatever it was, a gourd, a hate-spewing family member, a flaming orange pumpkin coach promising to take you to the ball, an unsustainable cultural system, it served its purpose and its time is now over.

Grieve the loss of what was let go and find ways to honor the experience. This latter part will help to avoid repeating unrealistic expectation again, see numbers one through three.

Trust the intelligence and interconnectedness of life to participate with us in creating a totally doable, grounded, human and life-affirming culture. See three for back up on this step.

Pass on these skills, traditions and beliefs to our children, hopefully before they arrive. See steps one and two.

What happens when we don’t tend our own consciousness, or bodies, or create supportive community to tell us we’re off course? Insist it’s our way or the highway? Culturally, it leads us to where we are now in the eyes of the world, a ISO Home poster hanging on a global cork board that no one wise or learned will want to befriend.

What other Cultural Gardening steps do you think we need to consider? Where do you find the Cultural Gardeners in your local, state or national communities? How did you create or find supportive community? Please share your answers in the comments below or send them to me at lisa@reagan.net.

Enjoy the series below of one of our favorite throwback roosters who successfully transitioned to a sanctuary farm. We think fondly of him and still wish him well. Yes, I lay on the ground and take pictures of chickens. Photo 1: Rooster checks out a hen; Photo 2: Crows to impress the hen; Photo 3: Checks to see that she is impressed; Photo 4: She is not.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2017/02/cultural-composting-year-rooster/feed/0Changing The Human Psyche For Living Sustainably: On Thomas Berryhttp://kindredmedia.org/2016/10/changing-human-psyche-living-sustainably-thomas-berry/
http://kindredmedia.org/2016/10/changing-human-psyche-living-sustainably-thomas-berry/#respondThu, 27 Oct 2016 01:59:18 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=19530 Listen to Darcia Narvaez, PhD, share her insights into Creating Sustainable Humans With Conscious Parenting in this this Kindred interview: Thomas Berry was a cultural historian who sounded an urgent alarm at the state of humanity and the planet. He inspired readers of his many books to reclaim humanity’s role as the consciousness of the […]

]]> Listen to Darcia Narvaez, PhD, share her insights into Creating Sustainable Humans With Conscious Parenting in this this Kindred interview:

Thomas Berry was a cultural historian who sounded an urgent alarm at the state of humanity and the planet. He inspired readers of his many books to reclaim humanity’s role as the consciousness of the universe and to restore a true partnership with the Earth Community.

The human destruction of the planet is directly a result of the loss of a “capacity for human presence to and reciprocity with the nonhuman world.” (18)

“The thousandfold voices of the natural world became inaudible to many humans. The mountains, rivers, wind, and sea all became mute insofar as humans were concerned.” (18)

Instead, humans need to perceive the universe as a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. As individuals recover this understanding, “a new interior experiences awakens within the human…the barriers disappear…an enlargement of soul takes place…the excitement evoked by natural phenomena is renewed.” (18)

“Dawn and sunset are once again transforming experiences, as are the sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and feel of the natural world about us—the surging sea, the sound of the wind, the brooding forest.” (18)

Humans have also lost the understanding that the Earth is a onetime endowment, coming into being as unique bundle of energy and self-shaping processes and systems.

To turn things around for humanity and Earth, “a largeness of vision and a supreme dedication are needed.” (19)

The third loss is an understanding that the Earth is primary and humans are derivative. Humans are dependent on the “integral functioning of the planet,” an obvious fact that is consistently denied. That this fact is extensively ignored and violated is beyond belief. (19)

Humans can easily bring about death but they are incapable of bringing about life without relying on the processes inherent in the Earth itself.

Here are the beliefs, all transcendent (outside of earth-focused living) and recently evolved in human presence on the earth. These have led humans to their earth-destructive habits in the last centuries:

1. A transcendent, personal, monotheistic creative deity

The view of God as outside of nature has led to a desacralizing of one’s experience on the earth, a loss of the sense of divine in natural phenomena.

Berry discusses how we are entranced with the possibility of a WonderWorld through the development and use of human technologies. Yet what we are really creating with technological advancement, if you are paying attention, is a WasteWorld.

What is needed is a re-evaluation of the industrialized, technological world.

Because of its destructiveness to planetary systems, the industrial world is a one-time event. And, unless things are turned around, it will lead to planetary and human self-destruction.

Berry argues that our Great Work is to construct and take up an alternate vision.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2016/10/changing-human-psyche-living-sustainably-thomas-berry/feed/0Womb Ecology Becomes World Ecology: In Utero Filmmakers Interview And New On Demand Viewing Insightshttp://kindredmedia.org/2016/10/womb-ecology-becomes-world-ecology-utero-filmmakers-interview-new-demand-viewing-insights/
http://kindredmedia.org/2016/10/womb-ecology-becomes-world-ecology-utero-filmmakers-interview-new-demand-viewing-insights/#respondTue, 11 Oct 2016 15:55:07 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=19337WHY WE SHOULD CARE “What we’re not recognizing is that people are parenting and conceiving and carrying and birthing children under increasingly stressed conditions. Increasingly, it takes two people now to provide a living in this culture to families. And they’re doing so in the context of less support because one of the ravages of […]

“What we’re not recognizing is that people are parenting and conceiving and carrying and birthing children under increasingly stressed conditions. Increasingly, it takes two people now to provide a living in this culture to families. And they’re doing so in the context of less support because one of the ravages of industrialization and globalization is the destruction of the extended family, the tribe, the clan, the village, the neighborhood. Parents who are stressed have been shown not to be able to be as attuned with their infants and children as parents who are not stressed. Not their fault. Not because they do not love the child. Not because they’re not dedicated, devoted, committed. Simply because the stress effect impedes their ability to attune with their child…And that has an impact on brain development.” – Gabor Maté, MD, quote from In Utero

ABOUT THE INTERVIEW

CLICK ON THE GRAPHIC TO WATCH OR PURCHASE THE FILM NOW

In Utero documentary filmmakers, Kathleen and Stephen Gyllenhaal, discuss the film’s breakthrough year at film festivals resulting in its translation into ten languages and multiple awards, including the San Diego International Film Festival’s Breakthrough Documentary Award in October 2016.

The documentary is set to be released for on-demand viewing on October 11, 2016. In anticipation of the on-demand release, Kathleen and Stephen speak to some of the hardest questions they have faced from international audiences, including: Why is the film so dark? Should pregnant mother see it? Is it a pro-life film?

The filmmakers share the need to present the solid and multiple fields of science that all arrive at the same conclusion during the course of the film: womb ecology becomes world ecology.

Watch In Utero’s trailer at the bottom of this page.

ABOUT THE FILM

A cinematic rumination on life in the womb and its lasting impact on human development, human behavior, and the state of the world. Fetal origins experts, research scientists, psychologists, doctors and midwives, as well as examples from popular culture and mythology, collectively demonstrate how our experiences in utero shape our future. In the year since its film premier at the Seattle International Film Festival, In Utero has been translated into ten languages and won multiple awards. The film is available for on demand viewing and purchase as of October 11, 2016 on iTunes, Amazon and VUDU.

BUY OR RENT THE FILM NOW

Visit the In Utero website to find more resources, including screenings, of the film at www.inuterofilm.com.

Discover more about birth psychology at the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health at www.birthpsychology.com.

LISTEN TO THE IN UTERO FILMMAKERS’ INTERVIEW

WOMB ECOLOGY BECOMES WORLD ECOLOGY

In Utero Filmmakers On The Documentary’s Groundbreaking Science And Messages, Audio Interview Transcript

Stephen and Kathleen Gylleenhaal at the San Diego International Film Festival accepting the Breakthrough Documentary Award in October 2016.

LISA REAGAN: Welcome to Kindred, an alternative media and non-profit initiative of Families for Conscious Living. This is Lisa Reagan, and today I am talking with the filmmakers of the documentary, In Utero, Stephen and Kathleen Gyllenhaal. In Utero premiered at the Seattle Film Festival in 2015 and over the past year has traveled to film festivals around the world. It has also been translated into ten languages and won multiple awards. Welcome, Kathleen and Stephen.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Hi.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Hi, how are you doing?

LISA REAGAN: I am so happy to have you both here. We did have a call last year and our readers can download or read that interview online, but you just were bringing the movie out and you weren’t sure how the audiences were going to react to it, so I look forward to hearing how the festivals and screenings went. But I would like to ask Kathleen if you would start us off with a little bit of an overview to bring anyone who doesn’t know what the film is about up to speed.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Sure, so In Utero is a feature length documentary that explores the origins of who we are and how we come to be who we are and it does that by looking, as you can imagine, the title suggests, at prenatal life. And we delve into a lot of research and we talk to a lot of scientists and psychologists and midwives and doctors and a bunch of people who all shed light on fetal origins, that is, what happens during our earliest time in the womb. The film really starts to talk about how the environment plays a huge part on how we are impacted at such an early early time in our development and that first environment, of course, is our mother’s womb. So everything that the mother is experiencing and going through emotionally and physically has an impact on us and that, you know, really brings us into some very interesting territory. I won’t go too deep into it because I’m sure we will talk more about it during this interview, but it starts to shed light on why the species is the way it is and why we are how we are in the 21st century. So the film begins to take on kind of a philosophical point of view as well as we look at the state of the world.

Why Is The Film So Dark?

LISA REAGAN: I love the film. I have been doing this Conscious Parenting Movement work for almost 19 years now and the film is a tremendous vehicle for the science that’s been around, as some of the presenters say in the film, for 50 years. But what you’ve done is you’ve brought coherence to all of these fields of science. There are more than one field presented in the film and you have made this amazing connection that is both profound and obvious between our origins in life and then as you say, the state of our planet right now. I would like to start there and ask about the darkness of the movie and the fact that it is presenting this problem and it is grounded in science, but it really can throw some viewers for a loop to hear this for the first time.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: I’ll start and then, I’m sure Stephen will want to chime in as well. What I think is difficult for some people, but also very provocative for others, is that we’re saying womb is not this paradise. One of our experts in the film describes it that way. It is not the paradise that we’ve all been led to believe. It’s actually a very complicated environment that we start out in and we as a fetus are absorbing all of the stress and trauma that is going around the mother, you know, and the society around her, the culture around her. We actually come into this world with this sort of imprint that spans back generations. This is called transgenerational trauma. It is passed down to us. But of course, that’s hard for people to hear. But what we are trying to say is that once you can identify that this is what has been going on forever and no one has really identified and stated it, at least in my knowledge in a documentary film and once this becomes more generally acknowledged and accepted, then we can start to forge ahead with how we can stop this transmission of trauma from generation to generation and we can really start to turn things around and we can really start to heal and evolve as a species. So what I say to people who say this is kind of gloomy and dark, I say well, you have to acknowledge what’s wrong first before we can find the solution and so it’s actually a positive thing.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: I think as we tried to figure out how to structure the film and cut the film, it was sort of like trying to help an audience understand and help ourselves even understand quantum physics or quantum theory. We have all lived in the Newtonian era where one plus one equals two, but what has really emerged over the last 50-60 years almost in tandem with the discoveries in this field has been the awareness of quantum physics, which is basically saying that everything effects everything else. So it is profoundly complex and almost as difficult to understand as when back everyone felt the world was flat because the world certainly looked flat and it all seemed to function flat, but it took a long time to understand that the world was round. This is the same kind of issue. It is a profoundly different way of looking at who we are because everyone I think believed, you know, it all started at birth. Now we understand it just takes a moment to sort of logically figure it out – well of course, the time that we were developing in utero is probably the most profound time and all of the things that effect that, for instance, genetics and this new field epigenetics, but if we just stay with the field of genetics for a moment, the genetics go back generation after generation after generation, so trauma from wars in the past have been proven scientifically on a molecular cellular level to have had an effect on the genetics of that generation and that continues down through this era now. So when we see people behaving badly now and when we see the state of the world now, we can begin to understand the causes of it. It is difficult news, but it is in a difficult place right now. It is in a dark place. That’s one of the reasons that this election is so troubling for so many people, but there is a cause. There is a way out. There is a way of resolving and I think underneath many people unconsciously, deeply feel hopeless. It is just hopeless, so just go on and live your life. This is really just saying, it is not hopeless at all. There really is a way through using science and through using psychology and through using all of the things that we now have at our disposal to make our lives not just survive, but that actually flourish.

Should Pregnant Mothers See The Film?

LISA REAGAN: In the film, Thomas Verny talks about genes being the blueprint for the house, and then you have Carrie Breton from Keck School of Medicine saying, yup you’ve got your blueprint, you’ve got your genes, but the cells of the sperm of the egg are kind of scrubbed out before they unite and then during embryogenesis there’s this other clearing. I think this piece is important because some people will only hear we are inheriting all of this transgenerational stuff and we have no control over it. The message right here at this juncture of the movie is actually the body and nature intelligence does a great deal to prepare the fetus for wholeness and wellness; however, the other presenters that now come forward and bring out the epigenetics part, which is the environment, the womb. Are we going to have good experiences? Are we going to have bad experiences? We are hoping for more good than bad, but the culture that we are currently in, as Gabor Maté talks about over and over again, continually hijacks our bodies and our neurobiology and this doesn’t begin after birth, it begins at conception. This is the piece that people find profound because we want to believe that babies come into the world as unconscious blank slates according to the Newtonian model, because God forbid everything that’s been done to them up to this point, they actually experienced consciously. So let me just ask, because the film is dark, do you think pregnant mothers should see the film?

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, you know, I’ve gotten some feedback that goes both ways. So when we’ve taken the film and we’ve done our answered questions and done Q&As and talked to a lot of people afterwards. I really feel it is almost 50/50. Some women say, come up to me pregnant and just thrilled that this film is there. They understand that it is tough, but they are grateful to have this information and I myself, having been pregnant during the making of this film and being hyper aware that all of the stress studies and all of the stress that impacts the fetus in pregnant women and so I had to navigate through all of that and I do understand, I was angry, I was frustrated. How do I… the irony was not lost on me. How do I get rid of this stress so I can be a wonderful vessel for my child? But, you know, learning what I learned helped me find some ways to reduce that stress and so I think it really depends on the woman, the mother, herself. I think it is up to her to decide. We had a midwife not long ago at a screening say I would never show this to any woman that I was working with, any pregnant woman. I thought, well, okay, that’s your opinion, but I would ask her, you know, these are the things that this film is going to lay out. You can even go to our website and look at the information. Maybe that’s less confrontational, but that’s really up to her. I say that again, based on the feedback that I’ve gotten from women who seemed that they’ve want to know and I wanted to know everything that I could know. I also feel that people will be able… well, I’ll let Stephen jump in about this as well.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, hey, I think now our little boy who was in utero during the making of this very very stressful dark movie, he is now 2 years old and I would warn people a little bit that he’s got a will of his own. He is very very creative. He is a handful. He is a full three dimensional really really amazing human being, so I can’t help but feel that the truth, even though it’s dark, seems to have played well with him. I guess ultimately it is the choice of the mother and people have to be very very careful. We live in complicated times. I do believe that the truth sets you free and that’s what this is about. The other thing that I would say is all of these quantum issues, trans-generational trauma, the environment in utero, how does stress work, how do the hormones work, going between the mother into the placenta into the baby, all of these kinds of things, we have to be incredibly forgiving of ourselves. You know, one of the things that makes me slightly weary about some of the new age people that I know and while I’m more inclined towards hard science is that there seems to be a sense that everything should be kind of wonderful. I don’t think that we’re at that point in the species. You know, you have a 2-year-old, you have a 1-year-old, you raise a child. You’re pregnant. It’s difficult, this stuff. But we should be… I think the key is to be unjudgemental, to be forgiving, to be open… I think it’s… for women to feel that they can watch it, that’s fine. They’re figuring it out themselves for the women and men who feel that they can watch it. That’s fine as well. We’re working our way slowly towards a very very exciting future. It really is evolution. That’s really what we’re speaking about is evolution. We’re right in the middle of that process. So I think it’s up to the mother and father. I’ll speak to the fathers. The one other thing that I would add is that being aware of the need for choice. We’ve been working on a shorter version, a 45-50 minute version of the movie that is more directed towards pregnant women that leaves out some of the harder pieces of information and also brings in some issues that are supportive because we understood this. So maybe one way of coming out… we need a little bit of money to get that version finished… it’s always with documentaries you need to get funding and we’re doing the best we can. But if we can get that version up and running, then maybe that is the first stage, and then you’ll watch… then if you feel comfortable with it, you’ll watch the second version of it.

LISA REAGAN: Right. So, when you say new age, what piece of it do you think is the new age part?

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, I mean, I have grown up through the 60s and 70s and all of the new age kind of, I mean, it is something wonderful about the new age, we are speaking about, you know, you can even go so far as you know, the Age of Aquarius or whatever, which is sort of interesting, because I think as that’s been happening we’ve been moving in, as I say to quantum thinking. So I think it is essentially the new age speaks to a process of really evolution. I just think it’s maybe a little harder than we thought than we were younger and in some ways more interesting too.

Is This Film Pro-Life?

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LISA REAGAN: Okay, here’s another hard question about the film that people have right away and you all experienced this when you started to bring it out to film festival’s and that is, is there an ulterior motive here of a pro-life message? I know that’s not true because you address it in the film, but for the sake of our listeners who haven’t seen the film yet, how do you address that? How did you address that to audiences worldwide?

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, we definitely had no agenda along those lines and, but we realized the minute you start talking about the fetus, especially when the development of the fetus and what the fetus is absorbing and we even say feeling in the sense of absorbing the stress and the other hormones and emotions from the mother. You know, you’re going to run up against this debate, of course. So we knew that we were walking into this. So we began asking all of our interview subjects to respond to that question of what do you feel about pro-life versus pro-choice in the context of your work? So there is a section in the middle of the film that addresses that. And all, for the most part, the majority just said this is just what we’re finding and we are not, we’re doing this outside of any kind of agenda, our research. Some of the interviews, some of the experts said, for now, we kind of need abortion because we haven’t figured out, you know, when you look at the unwanted child and all of the research out there that looks at the life of the unwanted child after birth is not a happy one. We haven’t figured out how to make all pregnancies wanted.

LISA REAGAN: Right.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: We haven’t figured out a way as a society yet to really support pregnant mothers, support children, support life in such a way that we won’t have unwanted pregnancies anymore. So until that happens, abortion is a necessary thing.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Also, I think, this is an interesting film. When you make a film, you bring… Kathleen has brought herself to the film and her beliefs, and I have my own beliefs and supportive of that as well and you make a film and what can happen if a film really works and we have found this film really really worked is that it becomes something beyond even what your own beliefs are. One of the things we did very early, because we were very worried about this subject, we are very very pro-choice. We gave it to a couple of friends who are kind of experts in the field of media and one of them said something very interesting because he had some pro-life people look at it and pro-choice people look at it. He said what’s interesting is whatever you thought you were doing, the film seems to move beyond the existing paradigm, which is very conflict driven. It seems to move beyond these issues into sort of the next paradigm, which is not necessarily where we’re at, but the film seems to have moved that way. And frankly, to my surprise, and to our surprise, I think, so far, there’s been very very little conflict around this. People have not really confronted us about this issue very much. Now, as it goes into general release next week, we may start to get that. I think it’s a very interesting conversation to have and a conversation that I think we and certainly I welcome because I think just like in this election, we find ourselves in the old paradigm at war with each other. The next paradigm, the quantum paradigm, is going to really make everything be able to be included. Both sides have a point and both sides should be listening to each other because what really matters is not the right or the left, or pro-choice or pro-life, but what really matters is that fetus that’s developing there that’s the future. That future children and future generations, it’s the future of the species. That’s what I think the film really focuses on more than anything else.

LISA REAGAN: Well, I think you’re absolutely right. It does take you out of the cultural trap of pro-life and pro-choice, which is a cultural trap and because the movie is moving us towards empathy for humanity and empathy for ourselves as individuals, you end up in that place and now you are in a different paradigm. The cultural trap seems over simplified, unempathetic and unintelligent. So that is true. I would say anyone watching the film would come away with that. It is made very very clear.

So let me just say a couple of things about culture. Because I have found in my work over the years with parents, it’s hard to get people to see the context of their lives. It’s difficult to get them to look at transgenerational trauma or the culture that surrounds us daily, hijacking our neurobiology, but Gabor Maté is very good in the film and going to the core issue which is now we have two parents that have to work. We have no paid leave in the US. We have the highest maternal morbidity rate in the US. So it’s really important for adults who are considering bringing children into the world to understand there is context for this decision that you’re making. Can you say a little bit more about that? I know you just released the piece on imprint.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Stephen, do you want…?

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, I think maybe what you’re speaking to is how does a woman who has a career, who has worked hard to get to the place or even now she may now be getting equal pay to a man, which is outrageous, but she has got a very good job. She is very effective, and now she wants to have a child, and all of the research is saying it is very critical that she around that child, bonding with that child from the time of conception onwards. How do you balance that? First of all, I don’t think it’s easy. I think, as with all of the things we are bringing up, it’s not easy. I don’t think you would talk with anyone who is a parent who says it is easy. The only people who imagine it is easy are the people who haven’t had children. But it doesn’t make it even remotely impossible. I’ve been involved with raising other children. I have two grown children who are very successful and their mother worked all of the time and I am seeing Kathleen working very hard as Luke is growing up and it’s been very clear to me that they have benefited from having a mother that has a full engaged productive life outside of raising the children, that it supports the raising of children. Now, the other piece that I would mention and I think that it is very critical is the father. That, you know, there is a change that has been happening very slowly and controversially. The father does not just go off and work all of the time. That, you know, that he’s also participating in that, supporting this process, and by the way, by the fact that two parents are parenting with two different ideas often has been proven scientifically to be vastly superior for a child from the very start that there can sometimes be more than one point of view. In our situation, of course, I’m always right, and Kathleen isn’t, but aside from that, you know, it’s kind of…

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: In your world, Stephen, in your world…

LISA REAGAN: Well, let’s take that a little… let’s take that even further and that’s back to what you were saying earlier, what you touched on, is where we are culturally right now. It seems the film is pointing to we have a population of babies. You know, it’s the Mr. Smith that’s in the Matrix up there that’s in a protectionist stand. So when you look at what is happening culturally now and after watching the movie, you see the protectionism is coming from basically a disrupted or undeveloped neurobiology it seems. Is that where you were going earlier?

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: I think that it is both neurobiology and psychology. The thing is, there are so many issues and so many different points of view about what is a human being, but certainly from a neurobiological point of view, yeah, there seems to be what is the neurobiological effect of trauma in utero or even trans-generational trauma on the fetus? What happens with that? Does this developing organism then split off from that trauma and then try and protect having to deal with that trauma? I mean, these are very complicated, almost quantum-like issues, which the film in a way we can talk about them here, but it is almost better to see the film and then talk about it afterwards.

Watch The Matrix Now

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: I was just going to say like it took months and months and months, you know, a year and a half to edit the film, and that section on the imprint which we used The Matrix, the popular blockbuster sci-fi movie, one of our experts really reinterpreted and analyzed the film in terms of being plugged into not The Matrix, but an imprint which is passed down from generations. It tooks months and months even just to edit that sequence because it was so complicated and you said earlier Lisa we brought, there were all of these different fields that we sort of tied together and I just wanted to revisit that. I explained that with the exceptions of just a couple of people that we interviewed that knew one or the other interview subjects, these people were working all in isolation from each other in their own fields or sub-fields and they all arrived at this same general idea about the imprint. So one of the most challenging and exciting things about making this film was being able to tie that all together and in a way bring all of that together, in other words, bring all of these people together in the context of this film and build this community around, whoa, everyone discovered this at the same time from totally different angles. So that was really exciting. So back to what Stephen was saying, rent the film tomorrow, Tuesday October 11 when it comes out and watch this, because it’s really an amazing discovery that has not been unified anywhere else I think. It’s hard to describe it in simple language. But cinematically, I think we are able to capture it.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: As an example, the fetus is not an intellectual construct. The fetus has feeling and an intellect as it is developing, as we as adults do. Film really primarily works best as emotional experience, as audiences having an emotional experience. There is an intellectual aspect to it. So there is a section in the film about the, with the Little Mermaid, the animated film the Little Mermaid and there’s a moment when this sort of monstrous mother-like figure rises out of the water and there’s the little mermaid and her prince I remember always feeling this is an emotional way, unconsciously sort of with an audience watching it to talk about the seeming force of the mother for a fetus. So it’s a way of not intellectualizing, but allowing someone to experience. I mean, you probably remember that section of the movie. It’s, it’s, one of the issues is you get the emotional experience of this rising powerful almost destructive mother. So that allows that feeling to go to the audience. The next part of it is to go, you may even feel that about your mother, but then you got to put in the very very important piece of trans-generational trauma because it is not the mother’s fault that this imprint happens that the fetus is imprinted with the mother’s negative material, problematic material. It is about the mother being, not even wanting to do it, but carrying the genetic structure of past trauma. But even as I try to describe it, I get frustrated, so you need to see the film, experience the film to begin to understand what is profoundly complicated when you first think about it, but it is really simple when you realize, oh the world is not flat, the world is round. It explains everything. It just takes a while to make that leap and the film is attempting to do that.

LISA REAGAN: I do think it does it beautifully. I love the pieces that you’ve incorporated in there. They’re very visceral. They can move the viewer easily into the places you want them to go, including with the alien movie that is literally visceral. Watching Sigourney Weaver give birth, as you said earlier, in this unwanted child segment. I should pause here and say to the reader, while the movie is complex and deep, it is also broken into sections that makes it easily digestible. You understand what’s coming next. Now they’re going to talk about the imprint. Now we’re going to go beyond the blueprint. Now we’re going to have the tales from the womb. So you can more easily go okay, alright, this is what we’re doing, which is how I had to watch it because I watched it a couple of times now and that’s great.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Thank you.

Will There Be An In Utero 2?

LISA REAGAN: So let me ask you what you’re doing now? I know you’re writing for the Huffington Post and you have a couple of projects in mind for how to keep the momentum of the movie now that it is coming out on demand viewing, as you said. What is it that you’re going to do? Where are you going to take us next?

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, I wouldn’t say it is so much now the momentum of the movie. It’s more the momentum of this movement, of this, which includes, you, your organization, people in Amsterdam, South America, Russia, Netherlands, all over the place. How do we get this new knowledge out into the world to protect this incoming generation and the generations to come and also to help people who are in pain and many people are, figure out why they are in pain. Because so much of it has to do with what happened in utero. So with that in mind even more than this movie, we are as you said, talking about In Utero 2. We are talking about cutting a shorter version of In Utero 1 to make it more palatable for those women who feel uncomfortable about facing that much material and we are also developing a reality TV show called Making Modern Babies which is going to take some of the experts we met around the world and have them work with four pregnant women as they go through the process. So all of those things are strategies. And then I think we are going to be moving towards those political groups that are involved with, you know, family leave in the United States and trying to have this country duplicate what’s going on in other countries and I think with the other countries have them expand it as well. Those groups would be doing that and we want to sort of be supportive of all of that. So those are sort of where we’re going.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: I think one of the things we’ve learned and it has just been fascinating and wonderful, as we’ve been screening the film festivals and special events throughout the year leading up to our digital release, we’ve met more and more groups around the world who have actually kind of taken the film and then helped us promote it because they believe so much in it and these are groups that deal with not only, you know, midwives and doulas, you know and the pregnancy and birthing communities, but we have found more and more people dealing with adult trauma, so that is what Stephen was bringing up. Because the film really is mainly about trauma as it effects everybody, no matter what age and what interests us now coming back to this point of you have to bring up the problem first before you can bring up the solution is the natural sequel to this film would be a film that focuses on how do we treat this? How do we begin to reverse this? Because of our travels with the film, we’ve met some wonderful groups that have introduced us to more therapies that do go back to in utero memories, so unconscious memories that are still in the body before the fetus had a verbal intellectual context, it had preconscious memories and these treatments and these therapies go back to that time. And once that memory is unlocked and examined, the idea is then we can move beyond it. So the more we get to know these groups, the more the sequel naturally starts to form. So we obviously can’t do much until we get funding for that and everything, but that’s where we’re headed.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: I would also add one last personal note in all of this. You know, we’ve both, but I’ll talk and speak about me, I’ve taken advantage of some of the therapies that we’ve encountered and you kind of work your way through this material and I think where I am right now in my life, I could have never have imagined 10 years ago having the energy to do everything we just discussed with you plus also still very much working in the Hollywood community. I do TVs. I have a movie that’s coming out. Kathleen and I are going to be doing a movie together, a narrative film as well, plus we’re raising a toddler, and it looks like we’re actually going to get another dog, which I think is nuts, but we’re going to do it anyway. So what we’ve encountered in this as well is a slowly releasing ourselves from our own trauma in utero, facing it, the bleak bleak elements of it, and I can speak about my own life in various times, it’s been very difficult, but now finding the energy to not just have a happy life because I do, but also a productive life. That’s, you know, a very important piece in all of this. It’s not just an intellectual exercise by any stretch of the imagination. It’s living real three dimensional life on planet earth at this moment, as troubling as it is, it’s a very hopeful time to be alive.

LISA REAGAN: I do really appreciate you bring that piece up. In our pre-call, I warned Stephen and Kathleen that my job as an activist is to tell the story and to try to help everyone move towards the New Story, as we call it on Kindred, which is a different paradigm. None of us are there. We are all in the space between stories. But the hope of healing and what it really offers when we shrug off the old story and the old skin and the old narrative is real. I wrote about this last month when Joseph Chilton Pearce died. If it hadn’t been for my encounter with his work when I was a young mother, I was very hopeless about where am I and how am I supposed to navigate this realm, that I couldn’t anticipate and I did try to prepare. I waited until I was 33 to have a child. But then once I was there, I needed somebody to give me the blueprint, the foundational piece of this is the cultural piece, this is the biological imperative, and here’s what possible. Here’s where we are capable of going as human beings if we have the support that we need and especially in utero. I appreciate so much both of you. I appreciate you coming on and sharing where you’ve been and where the movie is going next and you said, not the movie, the movement. So, is there anything else that you’d like to share with our listeners before we go?

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Well, I’ll just want to reiterate that after a year of showing the film around the world, as you said, it is coming out online on iTunes, Vimeo, Vudu, GooglePlay… I am forgetting a couple. Xbox. On October 11. So you can rent it or purchase it there and you know, we have a very active Facebook presence, In Utero film, and also on Instagram and Twitter, so you know, the website as well, inuterofilm.com is a great place to go to see where all of this information kind of converges. But the online social community on Facebook is a very dynamic place where people are coming and talking and sharing their stories. So we’re going to be focusing a lot on that as well as we move forward. So we hope that people can visit those sites.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Be truthful and honest and express what they feel they’ve learned and they believe and whether it’s in agreement or not, that’s the conversation that we all need to have right now. Huffington Post, by the way, is the other place to look for us.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Yeah, we’ve been now a couple of months now been blogging every 1 or 2 weeks and going further into details about the science behind in utero and also kind of extrapolating where some of that information, you know, can take us when we look at politics or, you know, when we look at society. So, it’s an interesting forum as well to explore all of the stuff that In Utero brings up.

LISA REAGAN: And you can go to inuterofilm.com. Is that right?

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: That’s right. Or the Facebook.com/inuterofilm

LISA REAGAN: Well, thank you all so much and I look forward to having house parties. I should mention that we do have a film discussion and study guide coming out through Kindredmedia.org and APPPAH and APPPAH is at birthpsychology.com because we want to help groups who want to delve deeply into the film to not only do so with some cheat sheets available for them, but to have resources and that will continue to add to the movement as it goes forward and we identify there are a lot of them out there now. We don’t want to leave people hanging, so we want you to see what’s available and then we look forward to following the Gyllenhaal’s as well in their posts and the movie bits that are coming forward. It’s very nice. So thank you both again.

KATHLEEN GYLLENHAAL: Thank you Lisa. It’s been a pleasure.

STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL: Thanks a lot.

WATCH THE TRAILER

The film is available for on demand viewing and purchase now. WATCH NOW.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2016/10/womb-ecology-becomes-world-ecology-utero-filmmakers-interview-new-demand-viewing-insights/feed/0How the Oil Industry Conquered Medicine, Finance and Agriculturehttp://kindredmedia.org/2016/03/how-the-oil-industry-conquered-medicine-finance-and-agriculture/
http://kindredmedia.org/2016/03/how-the-oil-industry-conquered-medicine-finance-and-agriculture/#respondTue, 01 Mar 2016 21:40:47 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=18082“How Big Oil Conquered the World” is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism presented by James Corbett, revealing the immense extent to which the oil industry has shaped and is ruling the world as we know it. “From farm to pharmaceutical, diesel truck to dinner plate, pipeline to plastic product, it is impossible to think of […]

“How Big Oil Conquered the World” is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism presented by James Corbett, revealing the immense extent to which the oil industry has shaped and is ruling the world as we know it.

“From farm to pharmaceutical, diesel truck to dinner plate, pipeline to plastic product, it is impossible to think of an area of our modern-day lives that is not affected by the petrochemical industry.

The story of oil is the story of the modern world. And this is the story of those who helped shape that world, and how the oil-igarchy they created is on the verge of monopolizing life itself.”

Corbett carefully details the sordid back story of today’s “oiligarchy.” While most people are well-acquainted with the Rockefeller name, few probably know the true history of the Rockefellers’ rise to power.

Big Oil — An Industry Founded on Treachery and Deceit

As noted by Corbett, certain details of the Big Oil story are well known. Others are more obscure. The story begins in rural New York state in the early 19th century, with William Avery Rockefeller, an authentic “snake oil salesman” going by the fictional name of “Dr. Bill Livingston.”

While neither a doctor nor a cancer specialist, Rockefeller, aka “Dr. Livingston,” aka “Devil Bill,” traveled the country’s back roads conning people into buying his “Rock Oil” tonic for cancer — “a useless mixture of laxative and petroleum that had no effect whatsoever,” according to Corbett.

William Avery Rockefeller fathered numerous children with three women, and took the name Livingston after being indicted for rape in 1849. One of those children was John D. Rockefeller, who became the world’s first billionaire after founding Standard Oil.

As noted by Corbett:

“When he wasn’t running away from them or disappearing for years at a time, [William Avery Rockefeller] would teach his children the tricks of his treacherous trade. He once bragged of his parenting technique: ‘I cheat my boys every chance I get. I want to make ’em sharp’ …

The world we live in today is the world created in ‘Devil’ Bill’s image. It’s a world founded on treachery, deceit, and the naïveté of a public that has never wised up to the parlor tricks that the Rockefellers and their ilk have been using to shape the world for the past century and a half.”

The Birth of the Oil Industry

Another character with a similarly dubious background is “Colonel” Edwin Drake, an unemployed railroad conductor who managed to secure himself a job with the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company after running into the founders, George Bissell and James Townsend, at a hotel.

The title “Colonel” was bestowed on him by Bissell and Townsend, who thought it might help him “win the respect of the locals” as he went about the company’s business, collecting Seneca oil, which the company distilled into kerosene (lamp oil).

His mission was to collect enough Seneca oil to make the business profitable — a task that turned out to be more difficult than expected, as mere gallons could be collected using the standard collection methods.

Eventually, he tried drilling through the shale bedrock to reach greater reservoirs of oil, and on August 28, 1859 — literally the day he’d used up the last of his funds — the oil began to flow from the ground. And with that, a new industry was born.

It didn’t take long before homes and factories around the world were using lamp oil refined from crude, and prospectors from around the country flocked to Pennsylvania in search of the “black gold.”

Among them was John D. Rockefeller, a Cleveland bookkeeper who, according to Corbett, had two ambitions in life: “To make $100,000 and to live to 100 years old.” With a $1,000 loan from his father, “Devil Bill,” John D. Rockefeller set off to make his fortune.

The Standard Oil Monopoly

After a series of partnerships and mergers over a seven-year period, John D. Rockefeller eventually incorporated Standard Oil of Ohio in 1870. According to the report:

“The next year, he quietly put what he called ‘our plan’ — his campaign to dominate the volatile oil industry — into devastating effect. Rockefeller knew that the refiner with the lowest transportation cost could bring rivals to their knees.

He entered into a secret alliance with the railroads, called the South Improvement Company. In exchange for large, regular shipments, Rockefeller and his allies secured transport rates far lower than those of their bewildered competitors.

Ida Tarbell, the daughter of an oil man, later remembered how men like her father struggled to make sense of events: ‘An uneasy rumor began running up and down the Oil Regions,’ she wrote.

‘Freight rates were going up. … Moreover … all members of the South Improvement Company — a company unheard of until now — were exempt. … On every lip there was but one word and that was ‘conspiracy.'”

By the time he was 40, John D. Rockefeller controlled 90 percent of the global oil refineries. Within another few years (early 1880s), he also controlled 90 percent of the marketing of oil, and one-third of all oil wells. His power and influence cannot be overstated at this point.

He had an international monopoly on what was to become the most important commodity in the world economy.

Following in Rockefeller’s footsteps were a handful of other wealthy families, including the Nobels, the Rothschilds, the Dutch Royal family, and millionaire William Knox D’arcy, who was the first to strike oil in Persia.

These early “oil barons” became enormously wealthy. And as billions of people became increasingly dependent on oil for virtually every aspect of life, they gained tremendous power and influence.

However, oil could have been replaced by other resources, were it not for the shrewd manipulation by these early “oiligarchs.”

The Death of the Electric Car, and Other Lucky Breaks

The advent of the electric light bulb took a good chunk out of the lamp oil market and temporarily threatened the oil monopoly. But lamp oil was quickly replaced by the need for gasoline to run the two-stroke internal combustion engine, invented by German engineer Karl Benz.

In 1888, Benz Motorwagen became the first commercially available automobile, and with that, the petroleum industry’s profits were again secured. But even then their ongoing monopoly was not guaranteed. The first electric car had been built in 1884, and by 1897, electric cars were gaining popularity in London. In the early 20th century, 28 percent of cars sold in the U.S. were also electric. As noted by Corbett:

“The electrics had advantages over the internal combustion engine: they required no gear shifting or hand cranking, and had none of the vibration, smell or noise associated with gasoline-powered cars. Lady Luck intervened again on January 10, 1901, when prospectors struck oil at Spindletop in East Texas.

The gusher blew 100,000 barrels a day and set off the next great oil boom, providing cheap, plentiful oil to the American market and driving down gas prices. It wasn’t long before the expensive, low range electric engines were abandoned altogether and big, loud, gas-guzzling engines came to dominate the road …”

Interestingly, the event that made John D. Rockefeller into the world’s first billionaire was supposed to rein in his unbridled power. He’d come under intense scrutiny as his wealth increased and, on May 15, 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Standard Oil a monopoly “in restraint of trade” and ordered its dissolution.

But by dissolving the company into multiple entities, shares of Standard Oil tripled in value, and in a few short years, Rockefeller’s worth equaled nearly 2 percent of the total U.S. economy.

“For the oiligarchy, the lesson of the rise and rise of Rockefeller was obvious: the more ruthlessly that monopoly was pursued, the tighter that control was grasped, the greater the lust for power and money, the greater the reward would be in the end. From now on, no invention would derail the oil majors from their quest for total control. No competition would be tolerated. No threat to the oiligarchs would be allowed to rise.”

The Continued Squashing of Competition

While the electric car had been successfully eliminated, thereby securing Big Oil profits, another competing resource was on the horizon: alcohol.

Henry Ford designed his Model T automobile to run on either gasoline or alcohol, stating that just about anything that could be fermented could be used for fuel, predicting the future of fuel was wide open to a number of alternatives. However, the oil industry succeeded in eliminating the competition yet again, this time by supporting the anti-alcohol movements and the formation of the Prohibition Party in 1869.

While Rockefeller avoided alcohol, his chief concern was not to uphold morality in the U.S. The prohibition served his agenda by creating burdensome restrictions on ethanol producers, and as ethanol became more costly, its attraction as an alternate fuel ceased.

Also, as detailed in my previous article about Clair Patterson’s fight to eliminate leaded gasoline, once the high compression engine was invented, car manufacturers started running into performance problems. General Motors diagnosed the problem, realizing that the problem originated with the fuel. General Motors tried about 15,000 different combinations of elements to find a solution to the engine knocking.

Adding benzene from coal to gasoline was found to work. Ditto for adding grain alcohol. Adding 10 percent alcohol to gasoline raised the quality of the fuel, causing less knocking in the engine. It also had other benefits, including clean combustion, which eliminated soot emissions, and increased horsepower without engine knocking.

But as research continued, General Motors determined that adding lead to the gasoline produced “an ideal anti-knock fuel” — ideal mostly because manufacturing the lead additive, tetraethyl lead, would allow them to make the greatest profits. Were they to add alcohol to the gasoline, the oil industry stood to lose a large amount of petroleum sales, anywhere from 10 to 20 percent, depending on how much alcohol was added.

By adding lead, the oil industry had a product it could again control in its entirety. So Standard Oil partnered with General Motors, creating a joint corporation known as Ethyl Corporation. Leaded gasoline became the norm, and over the next 80 years, countless people were sickened and harmed by this neurotoxic fuel additive, thrust upon the people for no other reason than it created the greatest profits.

Big Oil Secretly Buys Up and Dismantles Public Transportation System

In 1936, Standard Oil and General Motors also took part in the reformation of public transportation. Only 10 percent of Americans owned a car, and most city dwellers relied on electric trolley networks. By replacing the electric streetcars with gasoline-guzzling buses, the oil industry secured an even greater foothold within the U.S. economy. As detailed in Corbett’s report:

“The cartel had been careful to hide their involvement in National City Lines, but it was revealed to the public in 1946 by … Edwin J. Quinby … He uncovered the oiligarchs’ stock ownership of National City Lines and its subsidiaries and detailed how they had step by step bought up and destroyed the public transportation lines in Baltimore, Los Angeles, St. Louis and other major urban centres…

[I]n 1947 National City Lines was indicted for conspiring to form a transportation monopoly and conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies. In 1949, GM, Firestone, Standard Oil of California and their officers and corporate associates were convicted on the second count of conspiracy.

The punishment for buying up and dismantling America’s public transportation infrastructure? A $5,000 fine. H. C. Grossman, who had been the director of Pacific City Lines when it oversaw the scrapping of LA’s $100 million Pacific Electric system, was fined exactly $1.”

Next came the undermining of the railway system. In 1953, General Motor President Charles Wilson was appointed Secretary of Defense, and Wilson, along with Francis DuPont, Chief Administrator of Federal Highways, set into motion the largest public works project in U.S. history with the creation of the interstate highway system.

As a result, railway travel declined by 84 percent between 1945 and 1964, while private car ownership soared, and along with it, gasoline sales, which rose 300 percent in that same time frame. Similar social engineering feats took place in Europe, further securing the future of the oil business as a primary force to be reckoned with.

The report also goes into the details behind the gas shortages that sent the U.S. into a financial tailspin in the early 1970s, revealing how the secretive Bilderberg Group, created by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1954, successfully created a new financial system based on the petrodollar — a system that granted the oiligarchs unprecedented control over the economy.

The Rockefeller Transformation

In his day, John D. Rockefeller was a despised man. This all changed when he hired Ivy Ledbetter Lee, who essentially invented the public relations industry as we now know it. John D. was filmed handing out dimes to the poor, and was publicly portrayed as a kind and warm-hearted man. While hokey by today’s standards, such simple stunts worked. Yet, Rockefeller needed to go even further to truly gain the public’s trust.

As Corbett notes:

“In order to win the public over, he was going to have to give them what they wanted. And what they wanted wasn’t difficult to understand: money. But just as his father, Devil Bill, had taught him to do in all his business dealings, Rockefeller made sure to get the better end of the bargain. He would ‘donate’ his great wealth to the creation of public institutions, but those institutions would be used to bend society to his will.

As every would-be ruler throughout history has realized, society has to be transformed from the ground up. Americans in the 19th century still prized education and intellectual pursuits … with a remarkable 93 to 100 percent literacy rate.

Before the first compulsory schooling laws in Massachusetts in 1852, education was private and decentralized, and as a result … a solid grounding in history and science was widespread. But a nation of individuals who could think for themselves was an anathema to the monopolists. The oiligarchs needed a mass of obedient workers…”

The Takeover of Education

John D. Rockefeller’s first great act of charity was the establishment of the University of Chicago, followed later by a $180 million donation to the establishment of the General Education Board. But contrary to what you might think, these acts of generosity were not to further education, but to control and impoverish it.

Frederick Taylor Gates became a trusted ally, and in “The Country School of Tomorrow,” Gates lays out Rockefeller’s plan for the education of future Americans:

“In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science.

We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply.”

The Effective Strategy That Eliminated Natural Medicine

Other oil-backed schemes to mold and reshape the American education system followed, including a scheme to alter the teaching of American history to promote a view of collectivism, as well as a program culminating in the transformation of the practice of medicine.

Naturopathic-based herbal medicine was the norm, and Rockefeller set out to shift the medical industry toward using oil-derived pharmaceuticals. To this end, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was established in 1901, headed up by Simon Flexner.

“His brother, Abraham, was an educator who was contracted by the Carnegie Foundation to write a report on the state of the American medical education system. His study, ‘The Flexner Report,’ along with the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations were to shower on medical research in the coming years, resulted in a sweeping overhaul of the American medical system.

Naturopathic and homeopathic medicine, medical care focused on unpatentable, uncontrollable natural remedies and cures was now dismissed as quackery; only drug-based allopathic medicine requiring expensive medical procedures and lengthy hospital stays was to be taken seriously …

The fortunes of Carnegie, Morgan and Rockefeller financed surgery, radiation and synthetic drugs. They were to become the economic foundations of the new medical economy … The oiligarchy birthed entire medical industries from their own research centers and then sold their own products from their own petrochemical companies as the ‘cure.'”

The Takeover of America’s Financial System and the Creation of a Food Monopoly

The financial power of these oil industry giants is by now near-unfathomable, but the aim was to control the entire financial system. This was effectively accomplished with the creation of the Federal Reserve, established in 1913 following a secret meeting on Jekyll Island, during which the details were ironed out. Attendants at this meeting included John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s father-in-law, Senator Nelson Aldrich, and various banking representatives.

Later, in the 1950s, James Stillman Rockefeller, the grandson of John D.’s brother, became the head of National City Bank, while David Rockefeller, John D.’s grandson, took over Chase Manhattan Bank. Still, they were not satisfied.

“Springboarding from success to success as they consolidated monopolies across every field of human activity, the oiligarchs’ ambitions became even larger. This time, their goal was to consolidate control over the very food supply of the world itself, and once again they would use philanthropy as the cover for their business takeover,” Corbett explains.

The Rockefeller Foundation funded the Green Revolution that led to the introduction of petroleum-based agricultural chemicals, which quickly transformed agriculture, both in the U.S. and abroad. President Lyndon Johnson’s “Food for Peace” program actually mandated the use of petroleum-dependent technologies and chemicals by aid recipients, and countries that could not afford it were granted loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The “Gene Revolution” was next, and as noted by Corbett:

“The players involved in this ‘Gene Revolution’ are almost identical to the players in the Green Revolution, with I.G. Farben offshoots Bayer CropScience and BASF Plant Science mingling with traditional oiligarch associate companies like Dow AgroScience, DuPont Biotechnology and, of course, Monsanto, all funded by the Rockefeller Foundation …”

The Final End Game: Monopolizing Life

In his usual style, Corbett manages to squeeze in an incredible amount of information in as compact a timeframe as is humanly possible, and I highly recommend taking the time to watch the video in full. What I’ve included here is but a summary overview of the many details he brings forth in this fascinating report.

Those who are ignorant of history are bound to repeat it, and if this story tells us anything, it is that unless we realize what has been done, we’ll be deceived again and again, because the oil oligarchy’s end game is yet to be realized — if we let them. As Corbett notes in closing:

“The takeover of education, of medicine, of the monetary system, of the food supply itself, showed that the aim was much greater than a mere oil monopoly: it was the quest to monopolize all aspects of life, to erect the perfect system of control over every aspect of society, every sector from which any threat of competition to their power could emerge … But the oiligarchs are not done yet.

Their next project, launched in the late 20th century, is almost too ambitious to be comprehended … It is about the monopolization of life itself. They have spent decades preparing the path for this takeover and marshaled their mind-boggling resources in service of the task. And the vast majority of the world’s population, still playing the shell game that the oiligarchs perfected and abandoned long ago, are about to fall right into their hands yet again.”